The Benefits Of Blogging

No matter what your interests are, there is an audience around that interest. If you love discovering new recipes, there are lot of other people who love doing the same. If you are a fitness freak, chances are there are millions of people who are just like you and share that common interest.

The biggest benefit of blogging is to find like minded people and have a conversation around shared interests. The results you derive out of shared interests is completely out of you.

In this post, I will outline the biggest benefits of blogging and what one can achieve by consistently blogging about a subject.

1. Establish Yourself as an Expert

If you keep discovering new things around a subject and post it on your blog, you are gradually establishing yourself as an expert on that subject. Overtime, you will gain the attention and trust of your readers and a day will come when people will refer you as the “Go to” person to learn that specific craft.

Take the example of Lifehacker. I remember reading Lifehacker when I was in my freshman year in college and 10 years have passed since then. I have visited this website numerous times, whenever I needed some help regarding fixing my computer or learning a new thing about how to get something done. This website has slowly established itself as a leader in that niche and people refer to this website as an “Expert” and “Go to” resource.

If you are already an expert in something, it is a good idea to blog about your expertise regularly. People will take note of your efforts and the good karma will flow back to you in due time.

2. Sell Products and Services

As your grows in readership, audience and reputation, people will trust your knowledge and abilities. If you are an expert in your niche and know your thing well, why not create products or services around your interest and sell it to an audience?

We want experts to solve our problems, don’t we? So if your car is not functioning properly, you will take it to a garage and not try to repair the car yourself. This is because people trust experts more than they do themselves, when they have limited knowledge on a subject.

The same is true for any craft, not just cars. If you love discovering new cooking recipes and have been doing this for the last 10 years, start a blog, make it popular and then sell cooking recipes and novelties through your website. Trust me, a lot of cooking enthusiasts will give your products a try and if they find value in it, they will keep coming back for more.

3. Grow your Network

Blogging is a great way to grow your network and expand your reach.

When you write blogs around a subject and theme, people will connect with you through comments, emails, tweets. You will make many friends online and this networking is invaluable when you want to do something new. Network is power and intelligent people leverage their network to find opportunities.

4. Start a Business

Blogging is a good business strategy. You can use blogs to

Create a new business from scratch.

Generate new leads for your business.

Diversify your existing business.

So if you are a lawyer, you can create a blog, write about legal issues and attract an audience. Once there is a steady flow of traffic to your website and you have been successful in winning the trust of your readers, you can convert potential leads into your clients and start a business around it.

5. Become a better writer

You are what you do everyday.

If you love writing and want to take it up as your profession, please start a blog and keep writing about the things you love and are about. There is always something to write on a particular subject or theme, a good writer is hence never out of work.

When you write quality content around a topic and keep delivering it, businesses will want to hire you since you have so much knowledge and expertise around that subject. Start a blog, learn new things, keep writing about your learnings and one day, you will evolve into a better writer.

6. Generate Leads for a Business

If you already have a business or your friend owns a business, blogging can be a good lead generation strategy. Let me illustrate this with an example.

Let’s say your friend runs an eCommerce store. You want to give business to him and write a blog post around eCommerce. You optimize the blog post, ensure that it is search engine friendly, gets a continuos flow of traffic from search engines and social media websites and that way, you drive traffic to your friend’s business. Potential customers will discover new business through your blog and hence, a blog is a good lead generation platform for existing businesses.

7. Sell Advertising Space

If your blog has substantial traffic and good reputation in the industry, you can earn an extra income by selling advertising space on your blog. This is equivalent to selling bill board advertisements on your apartment roof top.

If your house is near a public highway which has a lot of traffic, advertisers will pay you handsome money for hosting their advertisements on your roof top. The same concept is applicable for blogs and websites with good traffic flow.

The best part is that there is no additional effort required, all you need to do is keep generating interesting and useful content on a regular basis and keep attracting an audience to your blog or website.

8. Make money through Contextual advertising

If selling private advertising sounds like too much of an hassle, you can use contextually targeted ads on your website using programs like Google Adsense.

Google Adsense is a free program for bloggers and webmasters to monetize online traffic. The advantage of using contextual ads is that you need not worry about finding and dealing with advertisers. The program selects the highest bidding advertiser for you and you make money for all valid clicks and impressions on the ads, when people visit your blog.

9. Hobby Blogging

Hobby blogging isn’t dead.

Many people who do full time jobs do maintain a hobby blog and write about their hobbies, life and interests. It is just an extension of your personality and adds to your hobby or craft. You need not become a full time blogger, you can be a hobby blogger and write only when you have something to say.

That way, you create your online journal and keep perfecting your craft by jotting down thoughts, notes, inferences. This is a good way to craft your hobby since writing something down documents your thoughts so you can come back at it later and read it to see where you are headed towards.

10. Find Freelance Work Online through blogging

You need not necessarily become a freelance writer to find work online. You can write blogs about a subject or problem and use it to find freelance work from potential clients.

I will share an example with you.

I know a person who was very good with Microsoft Excel. He used to write Excel formulas at office and was very expert at it, people considered him as an expert and often referred to him for good advice. He decided to write all his learnings down for reference so when people visit him for advice, he can simply point them to his blog instead of having to do it manually over and over again.

So what happened? Overtime his mini blog grew in reputation and one day a client agreed to pay him good money for consulting him. He started working for the client and now, he works full time as a Microsoft Excel consultant for many clients worldwide. He quit his job and has grew his business ten folds over these years.

All of that started with one client and his ability to fix a complex problem. Just imagine the possibilities!

All in all, blogging has great potential and can be used in so many creative ways to achieve your goals or business objectives. It all depends on your drive and how much effort you are ready to put into your work. If you work hard, post continuously and be patient with your efforts, results are bound to come in due time.